Nittany Lion Country: Gut-Check Time

That’s how the cheer goes. And as the university, the community and its Central Pennsylvania heartland come to grips with the enormity of the wrongs that have allegedly been perpetrated, many of us who are not directly associated with that university must nonetheless realize that we are all “Penn State.”

We are Penn State if we first thought of the damage to the university, to the football program, or to Joe Paterno.

We are Penn State if we have ever been part of an organization that chose to keep a scandal quiet and in-house, rather than reporting it to the authorities.

We are Penn State if we also, eventually, responded to the voices that called for acknowledgment of the victims and committed to making sure these abuses could not be repeated.

Every part of this country has high school and college sports (particularly football and basketball) that are the focus of the intense passion of a large part of the population (predominantly but not exclusively males). We tend to put a very high priority on achieving a winning program, even as we pay lip service to the ideals of good sportsmanship.

Joe Paterno was literally idolized because he had achieved a winning program (the winningest football coach in the country!) while, it seemed, maintaining the virtues of good sportsmanship and high academic standards. He embodied virtue. Now, though, we can only say that he met his legal obligation. Penn State and its fans are in shock and mourning at the fall of an idol.

Every sports program at every level, every coach, every athletic director, every school superintendent or university president needs to ask if they would have behaved any differently. Most, if they are honest, would have to admit that they would not have been any different. The first crisis response would be to protect the institution.

But it’s not just sports. Any organization that permits contact between adults and minors is at risk, and we may be sure that the response to alleged abuse in most cases would be similar: circle the wagons, protect the organization, perhaps expel the offending member, but do not call in the police.

If you think I exaggerate, remember the global cover-up of child sexual abuse by priests of the Catholic Church.

Most people, most of us, however, are also capable of doing right. Like the Penn State candlelight rally in support of the victims, we eventually get it. We realize that it is not about what will happen to us, to our programs or institutions. It is about what we allowed to happen to those children, and what we are going to do to make it right.

We are all Penn State.

John Peeler

Photo credit: AP/Matt Rourke

Posted on November 15, 2011

About John Peeler

John Peeler is a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, specializing in Latin American and international affairs. His op-ed essays have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, as well as many in local papers in central Pennsylvania where he lives. He has had letters published in both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Comments

We need to keep sight of the big picture. The moral code is about the Global Corporate and Personal Wealth that is now so powerful that that it threatens personal freedom of those who are not within that 10% of the population that controls the wealth and the vote.

To focus on the very few who might be a part of a an mentally incompetent or criminal part of our society who also live without a moral code plays right into the hands of those at the top who have created and perpetuate the class structure of leisure of wealth and work and poverty. It is at an extreme that is now beyond reason.

Thank you for pointing this out. In the past week others have been casting stones at Penn State and Paterno in the blind belief that somehow this was showing the corrupting power of collegiate athletic programs in a university. Yet, one only has to open the newspaper to read about the intimidation squads at work in the various Occupy groups that threaten victims (mostly women) of assaults and rapes in the camps. These intimidators don’t want the public to hear about those crimes, or the wanton destruction of property in the moments of rage we have witnessed because it would harm the cultivated image of these being peaceable protests.

The issue is related to organizational behavior – how one acts with any group setting. It is not limited to athletics program, or corporations or government. It is how humans interact when existing in a group setting. This author has it right – Penn State or Occupy is within all of us. It ultimately comes down to living by a moral code that requires us to do the right thing regardless of the personal repercussions.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Walker Foley: Elected officials seem to think there’s only one side of this property rights argument. The people who live in these communities have rights too, but the oil companies seem to have the jump on [the politicians’] side of the fence.